[BruceCM]

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Like the title asks! How, please?

[142857]

One can be truthful to the best of one's knowledge. That is all that any of us can do.

I've spent a few too many years living in countries where truth is not the be all and end all that us natives of the western world tend to think it is. In Thailand they say "farangs (white foreigners) worship the truth". Where they see respect, and being careful not to offend anyone or hurt their feelings, as much more important than truth. This is not unique to Thailand, in fact if you look at cultures throughout the world and throughout history as well, you see that modern Western culture is the exception in terms of our worship of truth.

[BruceCM]

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But to say it's more important to treat people with respect is making a claim about truth! It's also possible to believe you should be respectful whilst believing whatever else it is. That's not thinking you can't tell what is true. Or you'd not think it was true you should be respectful and you can tell that! And, somehow, you must think that approach is better than ours. So, you can tell it is? And think you can tell that?

[142857]

Is this thread a roundabout way of getting to the subject of objective morality vs subjective morality, religious truth, or some kind of discussion about God?

[BruceCM]

Not particularly but you can bring them in if you think it'll help. How do you discuss 'subjective morality'? If it really were thought to be subjective, how would you have any laws? Murder is only wrong if it's objectively wrong! What on earth would be meant by saying that's subjective? Morality includes telling the truth, doesn't it?

[Krazie243]

If the Thai beleive that 'white foreigners' worship the truth, then they have been sold a lie. In North America there is so little value placed in the truth that it has become a world of learning how to determine truth from lies. Hmmm, proof? Poker. Many more examples, but life is pretty much like one big nasty poker match in North America. I can't believe for a second any honestly informed person could believe that truth is valued here. People care more about each other's feelings and being politically correct.

BruceCM: What you say tends to be the instinctual belief of the masses, but unfortunately subjective morality can exist as easily as objective truth. In fact, ogjective truth can barely be said to exist at all unless there is the presence of a deity. But even in such a case, the argument has been put forward: "Is God good because he says good is good, or is good good because God says so?" There is, of course, the possibility that God is an abstract and simply is good by default due to being perfect, kinda like math equations work not because we made the system, but rather because the math was something that would have resulted regardless of the attempts of building a system. So some may argue that the answer to the question above is 'both'. But in the first case, God is subject to good, making him not all-powerful. In the second case, good is a mere decision of God's, so it is just as subjective as if there were no God with the exception that we allow a deity to remove the supposed subjective nature by taking the decision out of our hands. But ultimately, it is nearly logically impossible to properly describe an objective moral system.

If you assume at the beginning that morals do not exist, and we were to create them (or find them through inspection) then we should all arrive at the same answer if morality is objective. But we have severe debates over moral rules all over the place. Is it justified to kill a criminal guilty of serial murder or rape? I'm not an American but I'm pretty sure that America is pretty divided on that one, some states say yes, others say no. Heck there are some states that allow for murder if a person tresspasses on your property. Now perhaps these laws are immoral, perhaps we allow immorality because we prefer it over allowing others to take advantage of our cling to morality. But if we suggest that others can be punished for their immorality, we must punish them in a moral way in order to avoid the requirement of being punished ourselves.

So, ultimately, morality has been pretty much assumed to be a subjective subject by a vast majority of philosophers. Religion, on the other hand, seems to prefer something of an objective morality provided by God. This creates issues like war in some occassions, which leads people to question the validity of the claims of those religions. Worse yet, is that no one can prove God, nor which version of Him to believe. So the idea of believing an objective moral system becomes subjective as well, since you must somewhat arbitrarily pick which objective version you like best based on logic and preference (subjectivity). So until you can prove the existence of a perticular definition of God, there really isn't any definitive way to say that morality is objective. It must be concluded then that morality is likely subjective. I believe there is another category (intersubjective?) where the idea of morality is based upon the existence of people, but not subject to the individual themselves. In other words, murder is wrong regardless of who you talk to because we as a species of human could not thrive in an environment where killing was permitted. Of course this kind of morality cannot cover all laws, but it easily covers all the big ones like murder, rape, theft, lying/cheating.

So ultimately morality is subjective/intersubjective for the most part. It is nearly impossible to reasonably suggest otherwise. But of course, being that there is subjectivity in morality, we find ourselves in an even more difficult position: How do we determine what is right? 10 yrs from now the people may be different. Does this mean that morality will change? Does this mean that morality can change without improving or getting worse? Does this mean that something that is evil now may one day be good? 'Yes' is often the correct answer to those 3 questions, sadly. As a result, there are a lot of people who tend to try and approach morality from conceptual angles: "Greater good for the greater number.", "What were your intentions?", "Is your action part of the normal function of a productive human being?" - These all represent different philisophical approaches that all seem valid in their own light.

[BruceCM]

Hang on. Obviously, you, I and everybody else has to decide subjectively. There's one objective fact! It's like science or philosophy. There being an objective truth doesn't contradict people having subjective opinions. Sometimes, there may be some dispute about some parts of it. Yet to say anybody is wrong about anything requires there to be an objective truth of the matter. If anything, your arguments are in favour of objective morality.

[Krazie243]

BruceCM:

Quote

Yet to say anybody is wrong about anything requires there to be an objective truth of the matter. If anything, your arguments are in favour of objective morality.

Your statement is interesting and amusing, but not necessarily correct. First, you are talking about two different things at once here: (1) Morality's existence and (2) individual acts of morality/immorality. My entire argument was based on the existence (and what form of existence) of morality. I never said anything in particular about any objective morals. The closest I came was when I described intersubjective morals (morals subject to a species rather than an individual)

So your statment is part true, my arguments are in favor of objectivity - towards the ability to debate the existence of morality. But as per my standings of the individual moral acts themselves, that is an entirely different issue. Thus, my arguments do not favor objective morality, they favor objectiveness when discussing whether morality is objective/subjective/intersubjective.

Allow me to present an issue: Many years ago a northen group of people (arctic north) had small populations and relied on hunting to survive. Unfortunately there seems to be the issue that more women are reproduced than men and because men did all the hunting they would be overpopulated by women. Thus, infanticide (baby killing) was permitted to limit the number of women in the society. This was done for their survival. Now, we would all agree that under normal circumstances this act would be absolutely ungodly. But given particular circumstances, just about any action becomes appropriate. So we can't have morality based on actions without consideration of the circumstances. As a philosopher once mentioned, values seem to play a core role in how a society derives its morals. If you value life over money, your morals cater to sacrificing money to live. If you value money over life, you sacrifice your life to get money (example: become a workaholic). So basically we have a situation where not everyone has the same values, so we'll all have different ideas of what morals should be. Fortunately, a wide majority of the most important values are fairly common to the entire human species. The value of life itself, the value of possession, the value of truth. All of these things are valued by all people (although in different scales). So given that everyone has different values and different circumstances, we can effectively say that morality is different for every person alive. Or is it? Perhaps morality can be defined in terms of something other than actions. That is where the idea of intent based morality comes in, as well as a few others.

There are multiple schools of Utilitarianism that concern themselves with doing 'whatever' is best for the greatest good/number. This eliminates problems of specified actions within morality. But due to certain complications they become divided into Act and Rule based Utilitarianism - both having holes (not unlike pretty much EVERY moral system). Judging right and wrong based on Intent has been a personal favorite of Christians and similar types of thinkers. It is possible to combine the ideas of intent based morality and Utilitarianism but generally speaking these to moral ideas stay fairly exclusive. Basically, there are at least a dozen other fairly legitimate moral ideas, and they all have their issues. None are flawless. And that is where the major problem comes in. Which moral system is right if none of them are perfect? Doesn't that imply that morality cannot be a definitive thing? Perhaps morality doesn't even exist except as a creation of man. Then we start discussing Social Contract Theory - the idea that morality is man-made and it is simply whatever we make it. We make contracts with one another: "I don't want to die, I will agree not to kill you if you agree not to kill me". But for this idea to prevail, we must accept that there is no such thing as a real right and wrong, there is only what we choose to be right and wrong. Problems with this include the possibility that people will not accept your implied contracts - rudeness, abusiveness, etc. The other issue is that pretty much EVERY religious person believes that right and wrong are inherit things (things that exist without our existence) so a vast majority of people will detest the idea that morals are man-made.

So to wrap it up a tad.... morality is something you need a university degree in to full discuss and 'solve'. I've only attended 1st year philosophy and I'm still only at this point. I could go on for pages and pages if I wanted to really. Those 3 and 5 page essays were a breeze to fill. So much can be said on morality that I wish the prof let us use 10 pages for each topic, lol.

[142857]

Apologies, BruceCM, it appears that by bringing up subjective vs objective morality I have opened the floodgates and effectively derailed your thread.

[BruceCM]

That's OK. Possibly some use. Well, you say none of the moral systems is perfect. Again, you seem to confuse what people say about morality for morality itself. Of course, in one sense, all we have is what people say about it. So, none of the systems is perfect, in that sense. Also, of course, most of the problems are people misunderstanding and misapplying the systems. All of this still requires that there is an objective morality, however. That's the one point I keep on about.

[Krazie243]

BruceCM: Ok, I don't mean to be brutish or anything, but you've not pointed out anything to suggest that morality is objective. Lemme offer some definitions for you:

Objectivity: is basically a logical deduction made without ANY interfering preferences from either singular persons or from groups of persons.

Subjectivity: is basically a logical deduction that uses personal preferences of individuals to reach a conclusion variable on whose perspective is used.

Intersubjectivity: is the same as subjectivity, except that rather than depending on individuals, it depends on masses or entire species - basically to the extent that if humans did not exist, morality could not either so it is subjective, but that morality is not variable depending on which human you speak to.

Each of those words is a link to Wiki so that you can see the definitions given there. Basically, the one thing to realize is that without the existence of humans, there would be no morality. Animals live by instinct, so we say that nothing they do is evil - they do not know better, they are not intelligent enough to make moral decisions and so morals don't apply to them. So this logical deduction concludes that morality is not a given fact, but rather the result of intelligent beings. But suggesting this also implies that morality is a creation of intelligence. Thus, morality is whatever we make it - it cannot be objective. Now, whether morality is intersubjective (dependant only on human existence) or subjective (dependant on individual human preferences) is the true debate.

Now, if we were to base morality on what we value as humans and the circumstances we find ourselves in we will arrive at a kind of law incapable of judging individual acts. We would need look at intent. But there is also a problem there as intent cannot be proven, and even if it could, what sort of intentions are good and evil? The rules of intent become just as frustratingly hard to categorize as individual actions. So some propose we examine the consequences of actions, but there is a problem there as well. We cannot see the future. So what happens if we TRY to accomplish good and fail? Well then we are 'good' because we had good intentions? But that defeats the previous logic. So whether you wish to analyze intentions, individual actions or consequences, it is impossible to derrive a perfect morality. Thus, we use personal preferences to fill in the gaps and smooth out the edges. We decided to draw lines in order to remove the grey areas. You are either guilty or not-guilty (or insane) but you cannot be neither. Thus, grey areas cannot exist in law and we use subjective decisions to decide whether a grey is white or black. Of course, are their true whites and blacks? Murder, rape, theft? They must inheritly be blacks right? What about soldiers? What about Robin Hood? Now things get complicated again. When does murdering people who intend to murder you become ok? When does stealing from certain people and giving to others become ok? Subjectivity arrives again...

[BruceCM]

Tricky area. Think we need more contributors to really get anywhere with it. On the other hand, what's the logical conclusion of the subjective morality? That there isn't really any right or wrong, only opinions? Law then becomes decided by democratic process. Which is probably the best we can currently do. Perhaps you'd be better off reading C S Lewis on this? He's done several essays covering morality.

[Krazie243]

Well, as smart as C S Lewis may be, sticking to a simgle author is known within the intellectual world as complete ignorance. This is why I bring up works from Utilitarianism, Rachel's, Kant, Plato, Aristotle, etc. You know that authors who wrote their ideas anywhere from 100-2000 years ago have their ideas in a pretty decent order. But the fact is, everyone can be debated (I guess that is what makes morality a fun topic)

The one ultimate argument against objective morality is this: Even if morality was fixed/absolute, we as humans could not possibly have any way of knowing what that absolute is. If someone were to say that 'God' told them, then which of the crazy 'God' followers do we believe? And our perceptions are all 'equal' to one another's given an appropriate use of logic. So even trying to determine some absolute requires an act of democracy in terms of whether we think a particular rule is the right one. So since the idea of an absolute (objective) morality is subject to perception or interpretation, it is 'equal' to the idea of subjective or intersubjective morality.

Ultimately we have a few options for morality (I may possibly not list them all):

(1) Consequencialism: Morals are based on the result of a person's actions.
(2) Intentionalism: Morals are based on the person's intentions.
(3) Naturalism: If a hammer is a good hammer when it hammers nails effectively, then a human is a good human when they perform the function of human effectively.
(4) Social Contract Theory: Morals are inventions of man based on what rules they collectively agree upon for their survival and comfort.
(5) A-moralism: Morals do not exist, life is a free-for-all. But if you do something society doesn't like, they may react against you, so you avoid certain behaviours out of fear of reprocussions.
(6) Buddhism: Morals are kinda irrelevant, your actions merely have an effect on your life later or your next life.
(7) Religion: God made morals, they are what He says they are.

There are likely a few other unique areas of moral thought, and technically every single one of these theories has some means of holding water. As a scientific type I lean towards the concept of a-moralism or social contract theory. For me, morals are really just something that was invented by people as one extra thing during our evolution (assuming evolution of course) so unless someone proves the existence of God, the only alternative I see is the idea that morals were the first known case of something that resulted from evolution that wasn't part of the physical body. Due to the 50/50 possibility that God exists, I do also have a God related belief in morality. Since no religion can really fully agree with one another, I've decided that morality would have to depend on something other than rules. To steal from the Bible: A person's actions show what is inside of them. If they are good they will do good things and visa versa, but to determine this one views the reason for a person's actions. Selfishness is evil (not to be confused with being self-interested).

One interesting moral question you may want to ask yourself: Suppose there is an action that is neither good or bad - an action that does not hurt or harm, but also does not help. Is doing something that is 'not bad' good? Or is doing something that is 'not good' bad? According to Utilitarianism, 'No' and 'Yes' in that order. According to most other morality systems it is the opposite. But think about this from a religious perspective: If you have the opportunity to feed the homeless and instead you read a book, have you sinned?

[BruceCM]

How do you prove that morality is supposed to be logical? Then, how many different versions of that can there be? If you're not to rely on one person? If every idea about that is equal, I can invent my own!

[BruceCM]

Since you could always be out feeding homeless or otherwise helping others, in theory, there has to be some balance there. Sorting out exactly where isn't the current point.

[Krazie243]

Bruce: If morality is not logical, then what is it? Theoretically the only method by which a morality could not make sense is if it were designed by God. But what is the point of an abstract morality? Is that not the same as unusual slavery? So since the idea of an illogical morality is illogical, we should simply agree that morality must be logical (or close to it). While we may have differing opinions on what morality is based on, ultimately we must use a base assumption and work logically from there. For example, Utilitarianism uses Consequencialism as a base assumption. "The end justifies the means". Others use intent as a basic assumption for morality. Basically, every school of thought has a differing idea of what morals should be based on, but after the assumptions are made, the rest of the theory kinda falls into place. If you have two people that agree that morality should be based on intent, then their ideas of right and wrong will be extremely similar. The big defining difference seems to be: What matters most? The means, the reason, the end, or is it something else that matters? Or is it a complicated mixture of all? Or is it none of the above?

What do you think morality should be based on?

[BruceCM]

Well, you're trying to use logic on it! Logic can't promise that everything is going to be logical. If you believe we made morality up, doesn't it follow that ANYTHING we made up could be moral? So, if it was agreed to be moral to, say, exterminate all people with autism, then that'd be moral? As I say, that way, you can't say that ANY opinion about morality is wrong! As that needs there to be an actual, objective morality, even if we don't fully understand or agree about it. I'm a Christian, so I think it should be that.

[142857]

This is a long way from being a hard and fast rule, but generally speaking believers in God are inclined to believe that morals are subjective. Atheists are inclined to believe that morals are subjective. I'm inclined to think that the truth lies somewhere in between. Some morality is shared by almost all cultures, including those that are separated by tens of thousands of years. Do they relate back to a set of moral values that are at least that old, or is it pure coincidence that they share the same moral values, or perhaps there really is some morality hardwired into us. Or, more simply, some morals simply make sense for any culture to follow.

Some morality is, of course, heavily influenced by culture. There are huge differences between some of the world's major cultures in attitudes towards things like infanticide. That is where your obvious subjectivity comes in.

I don't think too deeply about it, don't get into the different schools of thought. It just doesn't grab me, I personally find it about as interesting as hearing an argument about "which came first, the chicken or the egg?". On the other hand, I think too much about stuff that most people would find a lot less interesting and a lot less relevant to daily life. Part of being on the spectrum I guess.

[Krazie243]

Bruce: It is correct to say that morals don't truly exist if we made them up. But in the same way that we made the dollar and the euro and all those other abstract monetary currencies, we as humans have essentially created things that exist because we brought them into existence. Just because morality is made up doesn't make it not real. Now, to say that no morality is correct since morality was made up is part valid.

One thing you should study first is Social Contract Theory. It helps big time in understanding this basic form of thought. The idea here is: Let's assume that morality does not exist yet. What do you NOT want others to do to you? Kill, steal, rape, injure, etc. So what happens when the big alpha male comes along and sees that he is bigger than you and you really can't prevent him from doing these things to you? Well he does as he pleases. That is the law of nature: "Survival of the fittest". But humans are smart, to defeat the alpha male, several lesser males decided to work together. After a while, strength and cunning were not the only essential tools of survival. Suddenly teamwork evolved. But for there to be a team, the team had to work together. If one of the team members got greedy, he would destroy the team by accident. So there had to be contracts or agreements. One member would not harm the other, or steal from them. Of course, there was no other way to punish someone for breaking the contract other than having the other members gang up on the disobedient one. So a person was effectively 'above the law' if there were no number of people that could defeat them. But due to the sheer number of people, no person is capable of defending themselves against everyone else. Thus, whatever agreements or contracts the strength majority decided on was considered the rule. As soon as someone broke the agreements, the remaining population would enforce punishment (or try to).

Now, do to the fact that there are underlying values common to EVERY human alive, there are some rules that almost never change: Do not murder, do not steal, do not lie, etc. These are considered intersubjective morals because they do NOT depend on personal preference - they are a perference essentially shared by our entire species. But there are many tinier morals that change depending on who you take to and where you go. These are the subjective rules because they depend on personal preference of people and groups of people.

Bruce, to be honest, it seems as if you have not had any experience in reading moral philosophy. I would suggest by looking at a few things, even if it is only a Wiki look. Look at such topics as: Ethical Egoism, Social Contract Theory, Utilitarianism, Kantianism and more. I should probably try to locate my 1st year philosophy text so I can find authors of various ideas.

[BruceCM]

That's assuming a part of morality! The golden rule of Do as you would be done by. If I really try to imagine no morality, I don't accept that rule. I think you'd find you have to assume some morality to get going with any discussion, actually. Try doing it with NONE!